Why, oh why. Marketing, perhaps. A nice guy, former mayor of Rome. Peaceful, cinema-lover. Writes novels, some detective stories, and now this. The most beautiful in the world. Referring to the Constitution of Italy. Why do we need to say that our stuff is the best? “Our” here means any stuff that is part of one’s own culture.
La più bella del mondo
Typically, Italians say or think this (including me?), the French say this, Americans (US subjects) say or think this. But I never heard Canadians and Brits say this. The best, the most powerful, the most democratic, etc., in all its splendid variations. Well, I’m tired of this habit, a forma mentis that empowers the various nationalisms, the West vs East, the North vs South.
Talking about West and East, I’m quite irremediably allergic to the very idea of Western Civilization (WC), for a few reasons I’ll deal with later. So I’m happy that John Naughton from The Guardian, a journalist I follow through his blog Memex 1.1, says he’s
[…] temperamentally suspicious of the ‘Western civilisation’ trope. Would that be the civilisation that launched two devastating world wars, by any chance? And colonised and looted half the world?
Touché.
Or perhaps WC is simply a propaganda idea to make believe that there exists (and existed in the past) a comprehensive, stable, closed thing that includes all ‘the West” and by definition excludes the East and possibly the South? It sounds bullshit to me.
This is why I’m so glad that through one of those serendipitous moments and links Alan Levine is so fond of, I rediscovered a full(ish) quote from Mahatma Gandhi himself. The very John Naughton told the story of Gandhi being interviewed by a flock of Fleet Street reporters upon his visit to England in 1931:
“Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilisation?” To which the great man smiled benevolently and replied: “Ah, Western Civilisation; now that would be a good idea.”
Case closed.
Says Naoíse Mac Sweeney on her writing a new history of the West:
Western Civilization is therefore not just a myth in the sense that it is a fiction that we tell ourselves, despite knowing that it is factually false. It is a myth that was invented to justify slavery, imperialism, and oppression. As such, it served the ideological needs of the time of its invention, reflecting the core values of the society that produced it.
Yet the modern West today does not have the same core values as it did three hundred years ago. We do not need an origin myth that is fundamentally at odds with contemporary Western values such as liberal democracy, the rule of law, and equality of human rights; undeniably rooted in imperialism and white supremacy. If we want to strengthen Western identity around our modern Western values, we therefore need to tear down the myth of Western Civilization.
–From Why the Idea of Western Civilization is More Myth Than History.
Here’s a link to her book.
BTW, John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 blog is fantastic: please subscribe!
